Month: November, 2008

I have recently been reminded of a form of poetry that we recite on a mostly weekly basis. Hymns. This is a hymn I have been thinking about a lot lately and trying to interpret in the same way that I read poetry.

Be Thou my Vision, O Lord of my heart;
Naught be all else to me, save that Thou art.
Thou my best Thought, by day or by night,
Waking or sleeping, Thy presence my light.

Be Thou my Wisdom, and Thou my true Word;
I ever with Thee and Thou with me, Lord;
Thou my great Father, I Thy true son;
Thou in me dwelling, and I with Thee one.

I am writing a paper right now (literally. My Word document is minimized on my screen as I type this). I have this problem with writing papers. I LOVE the research part of papers. I like reading, and thinking, and reading some more, and collecting ideas from various sources, and deciding which viewpoints I agree with, and interupting my roommates with my latest epiphanies, and then reading some more. Yes, I like research. But after the research, I have to actually write the paper. This is the part that I find boring. I have already decided what I think about the topic and quite honestly, most of the time I don’t really care about persuading anyone else of my opinion. But there is no way for professors to grade me on my thoughts unless I write them down.

So right now I am writing a paper. I can only stare and the black and white screen for so long before I get bored of the sight of it. So I have to take a break to look at something a little lovelier. Usually this means I stand up and go outside to look at clouds or at least glance out my window at a tree or something. However, sometimes an outside view is not easily accesible so I have to find some other pretty thing to look at.

Lately I have discovered that my favorite store has an online catalog. I discovered this over the summer when the theme for their catalog was a Middle Eastern market. I have an appreciation for pretty things and for the Middle East so when they stuck them both in the same place I was very appreciative. What in the world does this have to do with writing papers? Well, at the moment instead of writing my paper I am looking at this. Trains AND pretty clothes! I have this weird affinity for trains. One of my dream trips is to take The Orient Express along its historic route. And beautiful coats! I really like a nice coat.

Okay, that’s enough of a break and enough of sighing over pretty things. Time to go back to the paper.

P.S. I apologize to those male readers who may have found this post a little boring. I will not talk about clothes often. Just pretty clothes, and mostly just because they’re pretty.